Richard Desmond is half the man he used to be. At least on the basis of his wealth – which has fallen to £950m this year from £1.9bn at the time of the last MediaGuardian 100, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

But it is not only Desmond's wealth that has been on the slide. So too has the credibility of his publishing empire, following a string of libel payouts over the past 18 months, including the double front-page apology in the Daily Express and Daily Star for libellous stories about Kate and Gerry McCann after the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine.

That £550,000 payout in March last year was followed by another apology – and a reported £375,000 payout – in October to the "Tapas Seven", the group the McCanns dined with on the night Madeleine went missing.

Also benefiting from the Express group's libel largesse were Ozzy Osbourne, Italian footballer Marco Materazzi, sports agent Willie McKay, Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Great Britain and a teenager featured in a false front page story about the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool.

Desmond's celebrity magazine OK! also faced accusations of bad taste when it published a special "tribute issue" to reality TV star Jade Goody while she was still alive. The magazine had previously negotiated an exclusive deal with Goody for pictures of her wedding and children's christening, believed to be worth about £700,000.

The Goody wedding issue was reported to have sold about 1.8m copies, more than three times its average circulation of just over half a million. Desmond's gossip title needed a boost after it suffered a 25% decline in circulation in the second half of 2008. Northern & Shell has 21 overseas editions of OK!, 17 of them published under licence. Its US edition, however, launched with a big fanfare in 2005, has stumbled after a bright start and has accumulated big startup losses.

The Express owner launched a libel battle of his own this month, suing journalist and author Tom Bower over allegations about Desmond in his 2006 book about Conrad Black, Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge.

Profits at Richard Desmond's RCD1 Ltd, the holding company for his Northern & Shell publishing empire, fell 25% to £41.6m last year as the recession took hold. The private company also owns a group of adult TV channels and West Ferry Printers. The highest-paid director, presumed to be Desmond, was paid a salary of £641,000, up £10,000 on 2007.

The Express owner has never been what you would call a conventional proprietor. Accused of frequently interfering in his newspapers' editorial decisions – the National Union of Journalists blamed his influence for the libellous stories about the McCann family – Desmond is also regularly featured in the pages of his newspapers and magazines. But none of his appearances were quite so gushing as the double-page spread in the Express after he was awarded the Catherine Variety Sheridan award for philanthropy. "The award may not be as well known as the Oscars," said the paper. "But in the realm of charity work it is every bit as prestigious."

While Desmond might be one of Fleet Street's least-loved proprietors, he also has one of its biggest success stories of the past year. The Daily Star's circulation continues to go from strength to strength on the back of price cuts and front-page stories largely generated by the likes of The X Factor and Big Brother.

The Star has long since overtaken the Daily Express, which is in long-term circulation decline. Both papers once again saw job losses and cost-cutting this year.

It was Desmond's Sunday Express, however, that broke the story of the husband of the then home secretary Jacqui Smith's adult film scandal, revealed in a Virgin Media bill last June. And among the adult film channels on Virgin Media are some owned by … Desmond's Northern & Shell.